Management.of instructional time in some Ghanaian public primary schools

Abstract

Providing all the instructional inputs that teachers need for effective teaching in theclassroom, undoubtedly, is one of the major pre-requisites for instructional success, but how the instructional time is managed with all those inputs for the attainment of set instructional goals,certainly, "is of paramount importance. The study was designed to examine how teachers in twenty"four semi-urban and rural primary schools, which were randomly selected from five out of the ten regions in Ghana, use the official instructional time approved by the Ministry of Education in their respective classrooms. The emergent picture was that about 50% of the instructional time on the average in the schools studied is mismanaged due to a host of factorsincluding: late starting of schools; teacher-lateness to class; and teaching only few subjects on the time table.